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Cheers for Iraq Withdrawal, But Tread Carefully on Afghanistan

President Obama deserves the cheers of the nation for ending the US combat role in Iraq. The seven year ground war stirred national regional hatred of the US, and reaffirmed the US image as the bully boy of the world. The war was a colossal domestic and international disaster. The mountainous lies and deception used to get and keep the US in Iraq will be a permanent mark of historical disgrace and shame on the legacy of George W. Bush.

Now there’s Afghanistan, a war that Obama must tread carefully on to avoid making all the same mistakes that Bush made in Iraq. Obama in the White House pledged that he’d redeploy troops as fast as he could from Iraq to Afghanistan. Though he tossed out the figure of two brigades as the number of troops he planned to send, he hinted this was not fixed, and the number of troops might go much higher. That’s still very much a possibility.

Obama has never cited Pentagon pressure as his reason for upping the military ante in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has certainly hammered hard for troop escalation. But the massive troop increase is clearly his call, just as the Iraq war was clearly Bush’s call..
Obama, of course, learned from the perils of that call by Bush. He recognized that the Iraq war was an ugly and shameful page in US history. And that millions of Americans were furious and frustrated by it, and that the presidential candidate who would do something to change that would be cheered by Americans. Obama deserves the cheers for that. But Obama’s Iraq withdrawal is a great deal.